


Phantasmagoria

by Artemis_hunt_goddess



Category: Rusty Lake | Cube Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Animal Murder (but implicitly), Gaslighting, Gen, Hallucinations, I guess???, Surreal, ask me to tag bc honestly i dont know anymore, graphic description of violence, idk bro i mean its rusty lake ofc its surreal, spiral! rusty lake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26644054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_hunt_goddess/pseuds/Artemis_hunt_goddess
Summary: Statement of Laura Vanderboom, regarding a strange encounter in an abandoned cabin in the middle of a lake, known as the Rusty Lake in 1961, and the sinister events following it. Original Statement given September 27th, 1971.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	Phantasmagoria

**Author's Note:**

> It's me again with another Rusty Lake fanfic!  
> I have been into TMA recently, and I had this wonderful chat with Bella about a Rusty Lake/TMA crossover, and we both reached the conclusion that Rusty Lake is pretty much like Sannikov Land (a Spiral aligned location), and anything touched by it will be touched by Spiral and driven to madness. Also Mr. Owl is Very Eye Aligned but we have to see.  
> Enjoy!

**Statement of Laura Vanderboom, regarding a strange encounter in an abandoned cabin in the middle of a lake, known as the Rusty Lake in 1961, and the sinister events following it. Original Statement given September 27th, 1971.**

  
  
  


I’m afraid I might do something horrible. 

There is something, someone, a song that is deeply etched inside me. I have long forgotten it, but I still can feel the unfamiliar shapes of the song, the chorus that shapes the soul of me. It rings a bell inside me, so loud and so desperate that I have to clutch my head and my stomach, to not let the darkness pool out of my lips and guts and body. 

Laura, Laurel, Daphne. My name is Laura Vanderboom. Laura comes from the Laurel tree, from the Daphne myth. A woman who runs away, begging for survival and escaping and becoming something else entirely. A sign of victory and highest status, crowning my head with pale yellow hair and the roots going deep inside my skin.  _ Vanderboom _ , coming from the tree, from the roots that go beyond me, beyond my soul.

I’m at the therapist’s office. The doctor smiles at me and nods when I tell him about a cabin and a red lake. Was he always bald? Were his eyes always so piercing, his smile so fake? I tell him I don’t know him, and he chuckles lowly as if I have made a joke. He puts three papers on the table,  _ a Rorschach test _ , each with a dark shape on it, and asks what I see. The dark spots on the papers each form an identical cube. My head pulses again. I tell him I don’t understand, and he smiles again like he knows something that I don’t know, like I’m a child making a mundane mistake. 

“It’s what’s inside the cubes that differs. Which one is calling you to your roots?” 

I’m at a red lake. I don’t enjoy fishing; I don’t enjoy swimming either. Despite all of this I found myself near a lake, the lake, with the sunset reflecting on it and shining red, with a weird, unfamiliar smell.  _ Rusty Lake _ , the man on the phone told me, _ a place to empty your mind _ . I don’t recall the trip. I remember nothing after the phone call, till I arrive at the lake. It shines and sings. The old man on the small boat talks to me, his voice backward and filtered through his tightly sewed lips. He calls me  _ brother _ , and cackles when I look at him blankly.

_ Did you think you could run away from the lake? _ He asks and the lake stares into my soul, deep inside my bones, and pulls out the unsaid words and the forgotten memories and my head  _ hurts _ , hurts like something is trying to claw its way out through my eyes and nose and ears and mouth, and I taste blood and smell blood and the lake hums and hums.

I’m in an abandoned wooden cabin, clean and empty, with fishing equipment scattered around. My hands work nimbly, without thinking, like how you ride a bike after a decade and you still can manage not to fall, but this time I felt like falling, with each knot on the rope and every cut on the shrimp I found. There’s a paper, and written on it is a sentence. 

_ The past is never dead, it’s not even past. _

My head pulses. A tree grows inside the cabin, its roots sprawling on the wooden floor. A dark figure appears. It looks at me, and as soon as I lock eyes with its empty white eyes, all the fears die inside me. We dance together, an ungodly dance, and we become one, and I choke on the darkness rising in my throat and flowing down my cheeks as I cry and laugh and spin and spin and spin.

I wake up in my bed, and my shadow looms darkly in the corner, edges sharp, observing me with quiet tension. 

_ William. _

My name is Laura Vanderboom, I keep repeating it to myself. I write it on my post-it notes, stuck it on every surface. Yet my reflection in the mirror says otherwise, as the old man with the stark blue eyes,  _ my eyes _ , stares back at me. I check if it’s my reflection every time—I blink once, twice, and the old man blinks, once, twice. Yet when I step back, he steps forward, and I can see his chest open, his ribs broken and the empty place where his heart was torn out. His eyes are blank, just like mine, with no emotions. I feel a tug, an invisible thread joining me to him. I look away, but I see him everywhere I  _ reflect _ .

_ William, it’s time.  _

The phone rings. It rings for hours, and I sit in the darkness of my room, listening to the shrill sound resounding in my silent room until my wallpapers bleed. The flower pot is staring at me. The flower wilted the day I broke up with Bob, the broken look on his face and the way his hands shook when I left. His shadow looked starker in the cafe's light, and for a brief second, I’m reminded of my own shadow. But I leave, and I forget, or at least try to. Now the wilted flower has been removed from the pot, and a hand has grown out of the dry soil, the fingers bloody and bitten. It shakes whenever the phone rings and rings, fingers scratching at the pot. I unplugged the phone last week, cut the wires. It shouldn’t ring. It can’t possibly ring.

_ Ring… ring... _

_ Scratch, scratch. _

I pick up the phone. I always do. And I know what is going to be said to me. My face in the moon is screaming at me not to, as her throat is cut and bleeds all over the white surface. Someone is talking in my ears, through the phone. I don’t talk, because I’m scared of the dark liquid that is threatening to spill over my lips and onto the floor. My head is pounding. The backward voice, the distortion interrupting the call, noise building up in my ears, pressure behind my eyes, and my head is about to burst open.

“Have you thought about suicide?” the doctor asks me. He’s still smiling like there’s something funny happening that only he can understand. I don’t answer. There’s a blade in front of me, sharp and menacing. “You know we offer special treatment to those who suffer from suicidal thoughts, or as we say, inform us when  _ there will be blood _ .” his voice is now backward. I still don’t answer. The blade shines and sings a song to me, the one that is deeply etched inside me. I take the blade from the doctor, and he doesn’t stop me. There’s a bronze owl statue next to his hand, and for a second his reflection warps and changes into an owl, locking eyes with me. 

“You can’t run away from your past,” he says, and when I turn my head, he has an owl mask on, still smiling. “You can’t bury it and pretend it never occurred, because the past is not dead. It’s not even past.” 

Bob is sitting in front of me. There’s a cup of coffee and a donut on the wooden table.  _ The Owl’s Nest _ , the sign on the wall reads. There’s a poster behind him, of Lady of the Lake, an opera singer. She is staring at me, smiling. Her mouth has too many teeth. I look away. Bob looks like always, with his kind eyes and his awkward smile. 

“All you touch, you change,” the doctor tells me. “Look at what you have done to him.” 

There’s a hole on his temple, oozing a dark, thick liquid. Have I done that? I can’t remember. He’s still smiling, but his eyes are vacant and empty, his fingers blackening by his shadow. The black liquid smells like rotten blood. How do I know that? I look away as the shadow takes over Bob’s body, turning him into a familiar dark silhouette. There’s another man in the cafe, sitting in a faraway table. It’s you, with your worn-out brown coat and dark bags under your eyes. You’re looking at me intensely, and I can’t stop staring at the way your entire body is shimmering darkly, your shadow expanding and shrinking back. 

You say something urgently, as the doctor smokes his thick cigar and the fog spreads in the cafe, but your voice is muted and I can’t understand any word. Have I met you before? There’s an itch behind the back of my mind, a subdued urge to know you, recognize you,  _ remember  _ you. The doctor stares into my eyes and soul, and commands me, “wake up.”

I wake up in my house. There’s familiar music scratching in the background, one that I can’t focus on. It  _ claws  _ inside my head, screeching and bleeding, and my head  _ pounds _ . “There will be blood,” someone is talking with the same backward voice. “There will be blood.” A blade is in my hands, sharp and shiny. My parrot is screaming in his cage, fluttering his wings. “There will be blood,” he says, and screams at me to open my eyes, to not give in to the darkness within and focus, _ focus _ ,  **_Laura!_ **

I can’t get the blood off my hands. I keep washing them, but the blood goes under my nails and under my skin, bruising everywhere. I tore down the wallpapers and changed my carpets, yet the bloodstains are there, are everywhere in my house. My clothes reek of that horrible stench, that sticky flavor that hangs around you for days and days.  _ What, will these hands ne'er be clean?... Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh! _ I feel in on my hands whenever I close my eyes and nod off, and the song just gets louder and louder in my head. The doctor doesn’t answer my calls anymore, and the clinic says they never had a doctor with those features. The old man is laughing at me in the mirror, and I hear his laughter spilling out of my mouth and filling the empty, bloodied room. 

I’m afraid I might do something horrible. I have already done something horrifying and I’m afraid, I’m deathly afraid that I will do that again. I have thrown out the blade many times, but it always remains on my nightstand, gleaming in the night. Dark moths are egging around the house, looming like long shadows and staring at me with thousand eyes. Today, I looked into the mirror, only to find that the old man was gone. All I could see was the empty bathroom, no reflection of my own. I’m scared to look around, scared that he would find me and then I will become the faint reflection and he would replace me. Or did I replace him and I never existed? The song is too loud now, I can make out the words that are in another language, from another time and another reality. Please help me. You have to help me before something happens, before he does something, before  _ I _ do something.

  
  
  


But why does it feel like the end?

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes:**

~~_ I wish  _ __ ~~

~~_ I never knew _ ~~

~~_ If I had seen this earlier, could I save her? _ ~~

~~_ Why do I feel like I know her, know the _ ~~

~~_ It’s the lake. I have to find the lake and _ ~~

_ This document is directly related to the case 23 and will be attached to the files subsequently. Ms. Vanderboom has been murdered shortly after giving this statement. Although the motive of her murder and the murderer remains unknown, Robert “Bob” Hill remains the prime suspect. Needs follow up, especially on Rusty Lake. It might be the only clue we have. I have to study more about it.  _ ~~_ I still don’t know _ ~~

~~_ I had the same dream _ ~~

~~_ Why can’t I stop thinking about _ ~~

_ Additional information will be added to the case. _

_ Detective Dale Vandermeer _

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please make sure to leave a kudo or a small comment, that'd make my day!


End file.
